Re: Interesting embedded Ada news

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> Le Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:07:02 +0200, Thomas Løcke <thomas@12boo.net> a
> écrit:
>> Ada @ stackoverflow
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ada
>
> I don't believe stackoverflow is a so much place. Look at this
> question for an example:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15837081/ada-function-vs-procedure
> Some people voted to close it, and never come back to revise a
> decision and vote to re‑open. The question was actually a real
> question, but was closed as not being a question. That's not only
> because it's Ada, that an issue with stackoverflow in the
> large. Better a Usenet than something like stackoverflow.

I know you don't (didn't) hold with Google, but the top result for
"difference between ada procedure and function" is a different SO answer
[1].

So you are right in that we could have voted to close the question as a
duplicate; but it was definitely a lazy question, showing no evidence of
research (see the comment "Unfortunately, I have 24 hours to do whatever
:)"), and deserved to be closed (or even deleted).

But I'm pretty sure you're wrong to accuse those who voted to close the
question of not knowing about Ada; and I don't believe for *one*
*moment* that the questioner wanted to know about Ada2012 functions
being able to take [in] out parameters. If they knew enough to mean
that, they would surely have asked it; and anyway see their other
comment, "I thought it is different in Ada, because I saw everyting is
different including for loops (you know, there is a 'range' loop, which
is not a for loop)".

[1]
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/721090/what-is-the-difference-between-a-function-and-a-procedure